CHAPTER III.

PETER STOOD UP.

Seven days after the death of Gelasius, Anastasius, a Roman, ascended the

apostolic throne, which he held from November, 496, to November, 498. We

have two letters from him extant, both important. In that addressed upon

his own accession, which he sent to the emperor Anastasius by the hands of

Germanus, bishop of Capua, and Cresconius, bishop of Trent, on occasion of

Theodorick's embassy for the purpose of obtaining the title of king, he

strove to preserve the "Roman prince" from the Eutychean heresy.

"I announce to you the beginning of my pontificate, and consider it a token

of the divine favour that I bear the same as your own august name. This is

an assurance that, like as your own name is pre-eminent among all the

nations in the world, so by my humble ministry the See of St. Peter, as

always, may hold the Principate assigned to it by the Lord God in the whole

Church. We therefore discharge a delegated office in the name of

Christ."[70] After beseeching the emperor that the name of Acacius should

be effaced, in which he is carrying out the judgment of his predecessor,

Pope Felix, he mentions the full instructions given to his legates, in

order that the emperor might plainly see how, in that matter, the sentence

of the Apostolic See had not proceeded from pride, but rather had been

extorted by zeal for God as the result of certain crimes. "This we declare

to you, in virtue of our apostolic office, through special love for your

empire, that, as is fitting, and the Holy Spirit orders, obedience be

yielded to our warning, that every blessing may follow your government. Let

not your piety despise my frequent suggestion, having before your eyes the

words of our Lord, 'He who hears you, hears Me: and he who despises you,

despises Me: and he who despises Me, despises Him who sent Me'. In which

the Apostle agrees with our Saviour, saying, 'He who despises these things,

despises not man but God, who has given us His Holy Spirit'. Your breast is

the sanctuary of public happiness, that through your excellency, whom God

has ordered to rule on earth as His Vicar, not the resistance of hard pride

be offered to the evangelic and apostolic commands, but an obedience which

carries safety with it."

The Pope, then, standing alone in the world, and locally the subject of

Theodorick the Goth, makes the position of the Roman emperor in the world,

and the Pope in the Church, parallel to each other. Both are divine

legations. The Pope, speaking on divine things, claims obedience as

uttering the will of the Holy Spirit, which Pope Anastasius asserts, just

as Pope Clement I., five hundred years before, had asserted it, in the

first pastoral letter which we possess. He, living on sufferance in Rome,

asserts it to the despotic ruler of an immense empire, throned at

Constantinople, in reference to a bishop of Constantinople, whose name he

requires the emperor to erase from the sacred records of the Church as a

condition of communion with the Apostolic See.

This letter was directed to the East, the other belongs to the West, and

records an event which was to affect the whole temporal order of things in

that vast mass of territories already occupied by the northern tribes. On

Christmas day of the year 496, that is, one month after the accession of

Pope Anastasius, the haughty Sicambrian bent his head to receive the holy

oil from St. Remigius, to worship that which he had burnt, and to burn that

which he had worshipped. Clovis, chief of the Franks, and a number of his

warriors with him, were baptised in the name of the most holy Trinity,

never having been subject to the Arian heresy. Upon that event, the Holy

See no longer stood alone, and the ring of Arian heresy surrounding it was

broken for ever. The words of the Pope are these:

"Glorious son, we rejoice that your beginning in the Christian faith

coincides with ours in the pontificate. For the See of Peter, on such an

occasion, cannot but rejoice when it beholds the fulness of the nations

come together to it with rapid pace, and time after time the net be filled,

which the same Fisherman of men and blessed Doorkeeper of the heavenly

Jerusalem was bidden to cast into the deep. This we have wished to signify

to your serenity by the priest Eumerius, that, when you hear of the joy of

the father in your good works, you may fulfil our rejoicing, and be our

crown, and mother Church may exult at the proficiency of so great a king,

whom she has just borne to God. Therefore, O glorious and illustrious son,

rejoice your mother, and be to her as a pillar of iron. For the charity of

many waxes cold, and by the craftiness of evil men our bark is tossed in

furious waves, and lashed by their foaming waters. But we hope in hope

against hope, and praise the Lord, who has delivered thee from the power of

darkness, and made provision for the Church in so great a prince, who may

be her defender, and put on the helmet of salvation against all the efforts

of the infected. Go on, therefore, beloved and glorious son, that Almighty

God may follow with heavenly protection your serenity and your realm, and

command His angels to guard you in all your ways and to give you victory

over your enemies round about you."[71]

Towards the end of the sixth century, the Gallic bishop, St. Gregory of

Tours, notes how wonderfully prosperity followed the kingdom which became

Catholic, and contrasts it with the rapid decline and perishing away of the

Arian kingdoms. And, indeed, this letter of the Pope may be termed a divine

charter, commemorating the birthday of the great nation, which led the way,

through all the nations of the West, for their restoration to the Catholic

faith, and the expulsion of the Arian poison. No one has recorded, and no

one knows, the details of that conversion, by which the Church, in the

course of the sixth century, recovered the terrible disasters which she had

suffered in the fifth; a conversion by which the sturdy sons of the North,

from heretics, became faithful children, and by which she added the Teuton

race, in all its new-born vigour and devotion, to those sons of the South,

whose conversion Constantine crowned with his own. St. Gregory of Tours

calls Clovis the new Constantine, and in very deed his conversion was the

herald of a second triumph to the Church of God, which equals, some may

think surpasses even, the grandeur of the first.

It was fitting that the See of Peter should sound the note, which was its

prelude, by the mouth of Anastasius, as the pastoral staff of St. Gregory

was extended over its conclusion.

Scarcely less remarkable than the words of Pope Anastasius were those

addressed to the new convert by a bishop, the temporal subject of the

Burgundian prince, Gundobald, an Arian, that is, by St. Avitus of Vienna,

grandson of the emperor of that name. Before the baptismal waters were dry

on the forehead of the Frankish king, he wrote to him in these words:[72]

"The followers of all sorts of schisms, different in their opinions,

various in their multitude, sought, by pretending to the Christian name,

to blunt the keenness of your choice. But, while we entrust our several

conditions to eternity, and reserve for the future examination what each

conceives to be right in his own case, a bright flash of the truth has

descended on the present. For a divine provision has supplied a judge for

our own time. In making choice for yourself, you have given a decision for

all. Your faith is our victory. In this case most men, in their search for

the true religion, when they consult priests, or are moved by the

suggestion of companions, are wont to allege the custom of their family,

and the rite which has descended to them from their fathers. Thus making a

show of modesty, which is injurious to salvation, they keep a useless

reverence for parents in maintaining unbelief, but confess themselves

ignorant what to choose. Away with the excuse of such hurtful modesty,

after the miracle of such a deed as yours. Content only with the nobility

of your ancient race, you have resolved that all which could crown with

glory such a rank should spring from your personal merit. If they did great

things, you willed to do greater. Your answer to that nobility of your

ancestors was to show your temporal kingdom; you set before your posterity

a kingdom in heaven. Let Greece exult in having a prince of our law; not

that it any longer deserves to enjoy alone so great a gift, since the rest

of the world has its own lustre. For now in the western parts shines in a

new king a sunbeam which is not new. The birthday of our Redeemer fitly

marked its bright rising. You were regenerated to salvation from the water

on the same day on which the world received for its redemption the birth of

the Lord of heaven. Let the Lord's birthday be yours also: you were born to

Christ when Christ was born to the world. Then you consecrated your soul to

God, your life to those around you, your fame to those coming after you.

"What shall I say of that most glorious solemnity of your regeneration? I

was not able to be present in body: I did not fail to share in your joy.

For the divine goodness added to these regions the pleasure that the

message of your sublime humility reached us before your baptism. Thus that

sacred night found us in security about you. Together we contemplated that

scene, when the assembled prelates, in the eagerness of their holy service,

steeped the royal limbs in the waters of life; when the head, before which

nations tremble, bowed itself to the servants of God; when the helmet of

sacred unction clothed the flowing locks which had grown under the helmet

of war; when, putting aside the breastplate for a time, spotless limbs

shone in the white robe. O most highly favoured of kings, that consecrated

robe will add strength hereafter to your arms, and sanctity will confirm

what good fortune has hitherto bestowed. Did I think that anything could

escape your knowledge or observation, I would add to my praises a word of

exhortation. Can I preach to one now complete in faith, that faith which he

recognised before his completion? Or humility to one who has long shown us

devotion, which now his profession claims as a debt? Or mercy to one whom a

captive people, just set free by you, proclaims by its rejoicing to the

world, and by its tears to God. In one thing I should wish an advance. This

is, since through you God will make your nation all His own, that you

would, from the good treasure of your heart, provide the seeds of faith to

the nations beyond you, lying still in their natural ignorance, uncorrupted

by the germs of false doctrine. Have no shame, no reluctance, to take the

side of God, who has so exalted your side, even by embassies directed to

that purpose.... You are, as it were, the common sun, in whose rays all

delight; the nearest the most, but somewhat also those further off.... Your

happiness touches us also; when you fight, we conquer."

It is easy to look back on the course of a thousand years, and see how

marvellously these words, uttered by St. Avitus at the moment Clovis was

baptised, were fulfilled in his people. "Your happiness touches us also;

when you fight, we conquer." So spoke a Catholic bishop at the side, and

from the court, of an Arian king, and thus he expressed the work of the

Catholic bishops throughout Gaul in the sixth century then beginning. An

apostate from the Catholic faith has said of them that they built up France

as bees build a hive; but he omitted to say that they were able and willing

to do this because they had a queen-bee at Rome, who, scattered as they

were in various transitory kingdoms under heretical sovereigns, gave unity

to all their efforts, and planted in their hearts the assurance of one

undying kingdom. We shall have presently to quote other words of St.

Avitus, speaking, as he says, in the name of all his brethren to the

senators of Rome: "If the Pope of the city is called into question, not one

bishop, but the episcopate, will seem to be shaken". But that, which he

here foresaw, explains in truth a process, of which we do not possess a

detailed history, but which resulted, by the time of St. Gregory, in the

triumph of the Catholic faith over that most fearful heresy which had

contaminated the whole Teuton race of conquerors at the time of their

conquest. The glory of this triumph is divided between St. Peter's See and

the Catholic bishops in the several countries, working each in union with

it. So was formed the hive, not only of France, but of Christ; the hive

which nurtured all the nations of the future Europe.

When Faustus,[73] the ambassador sent by Theodorick to Anastasius to obtain

for him the royal title, returned to Rome in 498, he found Pope Anastasius

dead. The deacon Symmachus was chosen for his successor, and his

pontificate lasted more than fifteen years. But Faustus had hoped to gain

the approval of Pope Anastasius to the Henotikon set up by the emperor Zeno

at the instance of Acacius, and forced by the emperor Anastasius on his

eastern bishops, and specially on three successive bishops of

Constantinople--Fravita, Euphemius, and Macedonius--who took the place of

the second, when he had been expelled by the emperor. Faustus, who was

chief of the senate, with a view to gain to the emperor's side the Pope to

be elected in succession to Anastasius, brought from the East the old

Byzantine hand; that is to say, he bore gifts for those who could be

corrupted, threats for those who could be frightened, and deceit for all.

So freighted he managed to bring about a schism in the papal election, and

the candidate whom he favoured, Laurentius, was set up by a smaller but

powerful party against the election of Symmachus. Thus disunion was

introduced among the Roman clergy, which brought about, during the five

succeeding years, many councils at Rome, and embarrassed the action of the

Pope more than the Arian government of Theodorick.[74] The difficulty of

the times was such that, instead of holding a synod of bishops at Rome to

determine which election was valid, the two candidates, Symmachus and

Laurentius, went to Ravenna, and submitted that point to the decision of

the king Theodorick, Arian as he was. That decision was that he who was

first ordained, or who had the majority for him, should be recognised as

Pope; Symmachus fulfilled both conditions, and his election was

acknowledged.

Symmachus, in the first year of his pontificate, 499, addressed to the

Roman emperor, in his Grecian capital, a renowned letter, termed "his

defence" against imperial calumnies. This letter alone would be sufficient

to exhibit the whole position of the Pope in regard to the eastern emperor

at the close of the fifth century. Space allows me to quote only a part of

it.

The emperor of Constantinople was very wroth at the frustration of his plan

to get influence over the Pope by the appointment of Laurentius, and

reproached Pope Symmachus with moving the Roman senate against him. The

Pope replied:[75]

"If, O emperor, I had to speak before outside kings, ignorant altogether of

God, in defence of the Catholic faith, I would, even with the threat of

death before me, dwell upon its truth and its accord with reason. Woe to me

if I did not preach the gospel. It is better to incur loss of the present

life than to be punished with eternal damnation. But if you are the Roman

emperor, you are bound kindly to receive the embassies of even barbarian

peoples. If you are a Christian prince, you are bound to hear patiently the

voice of the apostolic prelate, whatever his personal desert.[76] I must

confess that I cannot pass over, either on your account or on my own, the

point whether you issue with a religious mind against me the insults which

you utter in presence of the divine judgment. Not on my own account, when I

remember the Lord's promise, 'When they persecute you, and say all manner

of evil against you, for justice' sake, rejoice'. Not on your account,

because I wish not a result to my own glory, which would weigh heavily upon

you. And being trained in the doctrine of the Lord and the Apostles, I am

anxious to meet your maledictions with blessing, your insults with honour,

your hatred with charity. But I would beg you to reflect whether He who

says, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,' will not exact the more from you

for my forbearance.... I wish, then, that the insults, which you think

proper to bestow on my person, while they are glorious to me, may not press

upon you. To my Lord it was said by some: 'Thou hast a devil; a man that is

a glutton, born of fornication'. Am I to grieve over such things? Divine

and human laws present the condition to him who utters them: 'In the mouth

of two or three witnesses every word shall stand'. O emperor, what will you

do in the divine judgment? Because you are emperor, do you think there is

no judgment of God? I pass over that it becomes not an emperor to be an

accuser. Again, both by divine and human laws, no one can be at once

accuser and judge. Will you plead before another judge? Will you stand by

him as accuser? You say I am a Manichean. Am I an Eutychean, or do I defend

Eutycheans, whose madness is the chief support[77] to the Manichean error?

Rome is my witness, and our records bear testimony, whether I have in any

way deviated from the Catholic faith, which, coming out of paganism, I

received in the See of the Apostle St. Peter.... Is it because I will offer

no acceptance to Eutycheans? Such reproaches do not wound me, but they are

a plain proof that you wished to prevent my advancement, which St. Peter by

his intervention has imposed. Or, because you are emperor, do you struggle

against the power of Peter? And you, who accept the Alexandrian Peter, do

you strive to tread under foot St. Peter the Apostle in the person of his

successor, whoever he may be? Should I be well elected if I favoured the

Eutycheans? if I held communion with the party of Acacius? Your motive in

putting forward such things is obvious. Now, let us compare the rank of the

emperor with that of the pontiff. Between them the difference is as great

as the charge of human and divine things. You, emperor, receive baptism

from the pontiff, accept sacraments, request prayers, hope for blessing,

beg for penitence. In a word, you administer things human, he dispenses to

you things divine. If, then, I do not put his rank superior, it is at least

equal. And do not think that in mundane pomp you are before him, for 'the

weakness of God is stronger than men'. Consider, then, what becomes you.

But when you assume the accuser's part, by divine and human law you stand

on the same level with me; in which, if I lose the highest rank, as you

desire, if I be convicted by your accusation, you will equally lose your

rank if you fail to convict me. Let the world judge between us, in the

sight of God and His angels; let us be a spectacle for every age, in which

either the priest shall exhibit a good life, or the emperor a religious

modesty. For the human race is ruled in chief by these two offices, so that

in neither of them should there be anything to offend God, especially

because each of these ranks would appear to be perpetual, and the human

race has a common interest in both.

"Allow me, emperor, to say, Remember that you are a man in order to use a

power granted you by God. For though these things pass first under the

judgment of man, they must go on to the divine examination. You may say, It

is written, 'Let every soul be subject to higher powers'. We accept human

powers in their proper place until they set up their wills against God. But

if all power be from God, more then that which is given to things divine.

Acknowledge God in us and we will acknowledge God in thee. But if you do

not acknowledge God, you cannot use a privilege derived from Him whose

rights you despise. You say that conspiring with the senate I have

excommunicated you. In that I have my part; but I am following fearlessly

what my predecessors have done reasonably. You say the Roman senate has

ill-treated you. If we treat you ill in persuading you to quit heretics, do

you treat us well who would throw us into their communion? What, you say,

is the conduct of Acacius to me? Nothing if you leave him. If you do not

leave him it touches you. Let us both leave the dead. This is what we beg,

that you have nothing to do with what Acacius did. Making your own what

Acacius did, you accuse us of objections. We avoid what Acacius did; do

you avoid it also. Then we shall both be clear of him. Thus relinquishing

his actions you may be joined with our cause, and be associated with our

communion without Acacius. It has always been the custom of Catholic

princes[78] to be the first to address the apostolic prelates upon their

accession, and they have sought, as good sons, with the due affection of

piety, that chief confession and faith to which you know that the care of

the whole Church has been committed by the voice of the Saviour Himself.

But since public circumstances may have caused you to omit this, I have not

delayed to address you first, lest I should be thought to consider more my

own private honour than solicitude for the whole flock of the Lord.

"You say that we have divulged your compelling by force those who had long

kept themselves apart from the contagion of heresy to yield to its

detestable communion. In this, O chief[79] of human powers, I, as

successor, however unmerited, in the Apostolic See, cease not to remind you

that whatever may be your material power in the world, you are but a man.

Review all those who, from the beginning of the Christian belief, have

attempted with various purpose to persecute or afflict the Catholic faith.

See how those who used such violence have failed, and the orthodox truth

prevailed through the very means by which it was thought to be overthrown.

And as it grew under its oppressors, so it is found to have crushed them. I

wonder if even human sense, especially in one who claims to be called

Christian, fails to see that among these oppressors must be counted those

who assault Christian confession and communion with various superstitions.

What matters it whether it be a heathen or a so-called Christian who

attempts to infringe the genuine tradition of the apostolic rule? Who is so

blind that in countries where every heresy has free licence to exhibit its

opinions he should deem the liberty of Catholic communion alone should be

subverted by those who think themselves religious?"

"All Catholic princes," the Pope repeats, "either at their own accession,

or on knowing the accession of a new prelate to the Apostolic See,

immediately addressed their letters to it, to show that they were in union

with it. Those who have not done so declare themselves aliens from it. Your

own writings would justify us in so considering you if we did not from your

assault and hostility avoid you, whether as enemy or judge ... but the

accomplice of error must persecute him who is its enemy."

Let this letter from beginning to end be considered as written by a Pope

just after his election, the validity of which had been disputed by another

candidate whom the emperor had favoured--by a Pope living actually under

the unlimited power of an Arian sovereign, who was in possession of Italy,

and who ruled in right of a conqueror, though he used his power generally

with moderation and equity; further, that it was addressed to one who had

become the sole Roman emperor, the over-lord of the king, who had just

besought of him the royal title; that it required him to cast aside his

patronage of Eutychean heretics; to rescind from the public records of the

Church the name of that bishop who had composed the document called the

Henotikon, the very document which the emperor was compelling his eastern

bishops to accept and promulgate as the confession of the Christian faith.

And let the frankness with which the Pope appeals to the universally

admitted authority of St. Peter's See be at the same time considered, with

the official statement that the emperors were wont immediately to

acknowledge the accession of a Pope[80] and attest their communion with

him.

What was the answer which the eastern emperor made to this letter? He did

not answer by denying anything which the Pope claimed as belonging to his

see, but by rekindling the internal schism which had been laid to sleep by

the recognition of Pope Symmachus. Before sending this letter, the Pope had

held a council of seventy-two bishops in St. Peter's on March 1, 499, which

made important regulations to prevent cabal and disturbance at papal

elections such as had just taken place. This council had been subscribed by

Laurentius himself,[81] and the Pope in compassion[82] had given him the

bishopric of Nocera. Now the emperor Anastasius, reproved for his misdeeds

and misbelief by Pope Symmachus in the letter above quoted, caused his

agents, the patrician Faustus and the senator Probinus, to bring grievous

accusations against Symmachus and to set up once more Laurentius as

anti-pope.[83] In their passionate enmity they did not scruple to bring

their charge against Pope Symmachus before the heretical king Theodorick.

The result of this attempt was that Rome, during several years at least,

from 502 to 506, was filled with confusion and the most embittered party

contentions. Theodorick was induced to send a bishop as visitor of the

Roman Church, and again to summon a council of bishops from the various

provinces of Italy to consider the charges brought against the Pope. During

the year 501 four such councils were held in Rome, of which it may be

sufficient to quote the last, the Synodus Palmaris.[84] Its acts say that

they were by command of king Theodorick to pass judgment on certain charges

made against Pope Symmachus. That the bishops of the Ligurian, Aemilian,

and Venetian provinces, visiting the king at Ravenna on their way, told him

that the Pope himself ought to summon the council, "knowing that in the

first place the merit or principate of the Apostle Peter, and then the

authority of venerable councils following out the commandment of the Lord,

had delivered to his see a singular power in the churches, and no instance

could be produced in which the bishop of that see in a similar case had

been subjected to the judgment of his inferiors". To which king Theodorick

replied that the Pope himself had by letter signified his wish to convene

the council. Then the Synodus Palmaris, passing over a narration of what

had taken place in the preceding councils, came to this conclusion:

"Calling God to witness, we decree that Pope Symmachus, bishop of the

Apostolic See, who has been charged with such and such offences, is, as

regards all human judgment, clear and free (because for the reasons above

alleged all has been left to the divine judgment); that in all the churches

belonging to his see he should give the divine mysteries to the Christian

people, inasmuch as we recognise that for the above-named causes he cannot

be bound by the charges of those who attack him. Wherefore, in virtue of

the royal command, which gives us this power, we restore all that belongs

to ecclesiastical right within the sacred city of Rome, or without it, and

reserving the whole cause to the judgment of God, we exhort all to receive

from him the holy communion. If anyone, which we do not suppose, either

does not accept this, or thinks that it can be reconsidered, he will render

an account of his contempt to the divine judgment. Concerning his clergy,

who, contrary to rule, left their bishop and made a schism, we decree that

upon their making satisfaction to their bishop, they may be pardoned and be

glad to be restored to their offices. But if any of the clergy, after this

our order, presume to celebrate mass in any holy place in the Roman Church

without leave of Pope Symmachus, let him be punished as schismatic."[85]

This was signed by seventy-six bishops, of whom Laurentius of Milan and

Peter of Ravenna stood at the head; and the two metropolitans accompany

their subscription with the words, "in which we have committed the whole

cause to the judgment of God".[86]

When this document reached Gaul, the bishops there, being unable to hold a

council through the division of the country under different princes,

commissioned St. Avitus, bishop of Vienne, to write in his name and their

own, and we have from him the following letter addressed to Faustus and

Symmachus, senators of Rome:[87]

"It would have been desirable that we should, in person, visit the city

which the whole world venerates, for the consideration of duties which

affect us both as men and as Christians. But as the state of things has

long made that impossible, we could wish at least to have had the security

that your great body should learn from a report of the assembled bishops of

Gaul the entreaties called forth by a common cause. But since the

separation of our country into different governments deprives us also of

that our desire, I must first entreat that your most illustrious Order may

not take offence at what I write as coming from one person. For, urged not

only by letters, but charges from all my Gallic brethren, I have undertaken

to be the organ of communicating to you what we all ask of you. Whilst we

were all in a state of great anxiety and fear in the cause of the Roman

Church, feeling that our own state was imperilled when our head was

attacked, inasmuch as a single incrimination would have struck us all down

without the odium which attaches to the oppression of a multitude, if it

had overturned the condition of our chief, a copy of the episcopal decree

was brought to us in our anxiety from Italy, which the bishops of Italy,

assembled at Rome, had issued in the case of Pope Symmachus. This

constitution is made respectable by the assent of a large and reverend

council: yet our mind is, that the holy Pope Symmachus, if accused to the

world, had a claim rather to the support than to the judgment of his

brethren the bishops. For as our Ruler in heaven bids us be subject to

earthly powers, foretelling that we shall stand before kings and princes in

every accusation, so is it difficult to understand with what reason, or by

what law, the superior is to be judged by his inferiors. The Apostle's

command is well known, that an accusation against an elder should not be

received. How, then, is it lawful to incriminate the Principate of the

whole Church? The venerable council itself providing against this in its

laudable constitution, has reserved to the divine judgment a cause which, I

may be permitted to say, it had somewhat rashly taken up; mentioning,

however, that the charges objected to the Pope had in no respect been

proved, either to itself or to king Theodorick. In face of all which, I,

myself a Roman senator, and a Christian bishop, adjure you (so may the God

you worship grant prosperity to your times, and your own dignity maintain

the honour of the Roman name to the universe in this collapsing world),

that the state of the Church be not less in your eyes than that of the

commonwealth; that the power which God has given to you may be also for our

good; and that you have not less love in your Church for the See of Peter,

than in your city for the crown of the world. If, in your wisdom, you

consider the matter to its bottom, you will see that not only the cause

carried on at Rome is concerned. In the case of other bishops, if there be

any lapse, it may be restored; but if the Pope of Rome is endangered, not

one bishop but the episcopate itself will seem to be shaken. You well know

how we are steering the bark of faith amid storms of heresies, whose winds

roar around us. If with us you fear such dangers, you must needs protect

your pilot by sharing his labour. If the sailors turn against their

captain, how will they escape? The shepherd of the Lord's sheepcot will

give an account of his pastorship; it is not for the flock to alarm its own

pastor, but for the judge. Restore, then, to us if it be not already

restored, concord in our chief."

Even after this synod at Rome, the opponents of Symmachus did not cease

their attempts. Clergy and senators sent in a new memorial to the king

Theodorick, in favour of the anti-pope Laurentius, who returned to Rome in

502; and it was four years, during which several councils were held, before

the schism was finally composed. Theodorick then commanded that all the

churches in Rome should be given up to Pope Symmachus,[88] and he alone be

recognised as its bishop.

Against the attacks made upon the fourth synod, which had dismissed the

consideration of the charges against the Pope as beyond its competence,

Ennodius, at that time a deacon, afterwards bishop of Pavia, wrote a long

defence. This writing was read at the sixth synod at Rome, held in 503,

approved, and inserted in the synodal acts. We may, therefore, quote one

passage from it, as the doctrine which it was the result of all this schism

to establish.[89] "God has willed the causes of other men to be terminated

by men; He has reserved the bishop of that one see without question to His

own judgment. It was His will that the successors of the Apostle St. Peter

should owe their innocence to heaven alone, and show a spotless conscience

to that most absolute scrutiny. Do not suppose that those souls whom God

has reserved to His own examination have no fear of their judges. The

guilty has with Him no one to suggest excuse, when the witness of the deeds

is the same as the Judge. If you say, Such will be the condition of all

souls in that trial; I shall reply,[90] To one only was it said, Thou art

Peter, &c. And further, that the dignity of that see has been made

venerable to the whole world by the voice of holy pontiffs, when all the

faithful in every part are made subject to it, and it is marked out as the

head of the whole body."

From the whole of this history we deduce the fact, that the enmity of the

eastern emperor was able by bribing a party at Rome to stir up a schism

against the lawful Pope, which had for its result to call forth the witness

of the Italian and the Gallic bishops respecting the singular prerogatives

of the Holy See. They spoke in the person of Ennodius and Avitus. We have,

in consequence, recorded for us in black and white the axiom which had been

acted upon from the beginning, "the First See is judged by no one".

Let us see on the contrary what the same emperor was not only willing but

able to do in the city which had succeeded to Rome as the capital of the

empire, in which Anastasius reigned alone.

In the year 496, Anastasius had found himself able, as we have seen, to

depose, by help of the resident council, Euphemius of Constantinople. As

his successor was chosen Macedonius, sister's son of the former bishop,

Gennadius, and like him of gentle spirit, "a holy man,[91] the champion of

the orthodox".[92] However much the opinion was then spread in the East

that a successor might rightfully be appointed to a bishop forcibly

expelled from his see, if otherwise the Church would be deprived of its

pastor--an opinion which Pope Gelasius very decidedly censured--Macedonius

II. felt very keenly the unlawfulness of his appointment. When the deposed

Euphemius asked of him a safe conduct for his journey into banishment, and

Macedonius received authority to grant it, he went into the baptistry to

give it, but caused his archdeacon first to remove his omophorion, and

appeared in the garb of a simple priest to give his predecessor a sum of

money collected for him. He was much praised for this. Yet Macedonius had

to subscribe the Henotikon. Hence he experienced a strong opposition from

the monks, who, in their resolute maintenance of the Council of Chalcedon,

declined communion with him; so the nuns also. Macedonius sought to gain

them by holding a council in 497 or 498, which condemned the Eutycheans and

expressed assent to the Council of Chalcedon.

Macedonius was by no means inclined to give up the lately won privileges of

his see as to the ordination of the Exarch of Cappadocian Caesarea, but he

would willingly have restored peace with Rome, and have accepted the

invitation from Rome to celebrate with special splendour the feast day of

St. Peter and St. Paul. The emperor would not let him send a synodical

letter to Rome.

Macedonius could not be induced by threat or promise of the emperor to give

up to him the paper in which at his coronation by Euphemius he had promised

to maintain the Council of Chalcedon. The emperor, after concluding peace

with the Persians, more and more favoured the Eutycheans, and seemed

resolved either to bend or to break Macedonius. The people were so

embittered against Anastasius that he did not venture to appear without his

life-guards even at a religious solemnity, and this became from that time

a rule which marks the sinking moral influence of the emperors. The

suspicion of the people against Anastasius was increased because his mother

was a Manichean, his uncle, Clearchus, devoted to the Arians, and he kept

in his palace Manichean pictures by a Syropersian artist. The Monophysite

party had at the time two very skilful leaders, the monk Severus from

Pisidia and the Persian Xenaias. Xenaias had been made bishop of Hierapolis

by Peter the Fuller, was in fierce conflict with Flavian, patriarch of

Antioch, and raised almost all Syria against him. He carried the flame of

discord even to Constantinople. There a certain fanatic, Ascholius, tried

to murder Macedonius, who pardoned him and bestowed on him a monthly

pension. Presently large troops of monks came under Severus to

Constantinople, bent upon ruining Macedonius. The state of parties became

still more threatening. Macedonius showed still greater energy; he declared

that he would only hold communion with the patriarch of Alexandria and the

party of Severus if they would recognise the Council of Chalcedon as mother

and teacher. But Anastasius, bribed by the Alexandrian patriarch John II.

with two thousand pounds of gold, required that he should anathematise this

council. To this Macedonius answered that this could not be done except in

an ecumenical council presided over by the bishop of Rome. The emperor in

his wrath violated the right of sanctuary in the Catholic churches and

bestowed it on heretical churches. The Eutycheans supplied with money broke

out against the Catholics. They had sung their addition to the Trisagion

on a Sunday in the Church of St. Michael within the palace. They tried to

do it the next Sunday in the cathedral, upon which a fierce tumult broke

out, and they were mishandled and driven out by the people. Now the party

of Severus, favoured by the emperor and many officials, broke out into loud

abuse of Macedonius. Thereupon the faithful part of his flock rose for

their bishop, and the streets rung with the cry, "It is the time of

martyrdom; let no man forsake his father". Anastasius was declared a

Manichean and unfit to rule. The emperor was frightened; he shut the doors

of his palace and prepared for flight. He had sworn never again to admit

the patriarch to his presence, but in his perplexity sent for him. On his

way Macedonius was received with loud acclaim, "Our father is with us," in

which the life-guards joined. He boldly reproved the emperor as enemy of

the Church; but the emperor's hypocritical excuses pacified the patriarch.

When the danger was passed by Anastasius pursued fresh intrigues. He

required Macedonius to subscribe a formula in which the Council of

Chalcedon was passed over. Macedonius would seem to have been deceived, but

afterwards insisted publicly before the monks on his adherence to its

decrees. Then Anastasius tried again to depose him. All possible calumnies

were spread against him--immorality, Nestorianism, falsification of the

Bible; all failed. Then the emperor demanded the delivering up of the

original acts of Chalcedon, which the patriarch steadily refused.

Macedonius had sealed them up and placed them on the altar under God's

protection; but the emperor had them taken away by the eunuch Kalapodius,

economus of the cathedral, and then burnt. After this he imprisoned and

banished a number of the patriarch's friends and relations; then he had the

patriarch seized in the night, deported from the capital to Chalcedon, and

thence to Euchaites in Paphlagonia, to which place he had also banished

Euphemius. Macedonius lived some years after his exile. He died at Gangra

about 516, and was immediately counted among the saints of the eastern

Church.

It cost Anastasius fifteen years to depose Macedonius, that is, from 496 to

511, and this was the way he accomplished it. Thus he succeeded in

overthrowing two bishops of his capital--Euphemius and Macedonius--neither

of whom lived or died in communion with Rome, because, though virtuous and

orthodox in the main, they would not surrender the memory of Acacius. They

had, moreover, one grievous blot on their conduct as bishops. They

submitted themselves to subscribe an imperial statement of doctrine and to

permit its imposition on others. This was a use of despotism in the eastern

Church introduced by the insurgent Basiliscus, carried out first by Zeno

and then by Anastasius, tending to the ruin both of doctrine and

discipline. During the whole reign of Anastasius the patriarchal sees of

Alexandria and Antioch, which had built up the eastern Church in the first

three centuries, which Rome acknowledged as truly patriarchal under Pope

Gelasius in 496, and the new sees which claimed to be patriarchal,

Constantinople and Jerusalem, were in a state of the greatest confusion, a

prey to heresy, party spirit, violence of every kind. Anastasius was able

to disturb Pope Symmachus during the first half of his pontificate by

fostering a schism among his clergy, with the result that he brought out

the recognition of the Pope's privilege not to be judged by his inferiors.

But he was enabled to depose two bishops of the imperial see, his own

patriarchs, blameless in their personal life, orthodox in their doctrine,

longing for reunion with Rome, yet stained by their fatal surrender of

their spiritual independence, subscription to the emperor's imposition of

doctrine. They were not acknowledged by St. Peter's See, and they fell

before the emperor.

In the last years of this emperor, the churches of the eastern empire were

involved in the greatest disorders and sufferings. He had thrown aside

altogether the mask of Catholic: he filled the patriarchal sees with the

fiercest heretics. Flavian was driven from Antioch, Elias from Jerusalem.

Timotheus, a man of bad character, had been put by him into the see of

Constantinople. In this extremity of misery and confusion, the eastern

Church addressed Pope Symmachus in 512.[93]

"We venture to address you, not for the loss of one sheep or one drachma,

but for the salvation of three parts of the world, redeemed not by

corruptible silver or gold, but by the precious blood of the Lamb of God,

as the blessed prince of the glorious Apostles taught, whose chair the Good

Shepherd, Christ, has entrusted to your beatitude. Therefore, as an

affectionate father for his children, seeing with spiritual eyes how we are

perishing in the prevarication of our father Acacius, delay not, sleep not,

but hasten to deliver us, since not in binding only but in loosing those

long bound the power has been given to thee; for you know the mind of

Christ who are daily taught by your sacred teacher Peter to feed Christ's

sheep entrusted to you through the whole habitable world, collected not by

force, but by choice, and with the great doctor Paul cry to us your

subjects 'not because we exercise dominion over your faith, but we are

helpers in your joy'. 'Hasten then to help that east from which the Saviour

sent to you the two great lights of day, Peter and Paul, to illuminate the

whole world.'" They call upon him as the true physician; they disclose to

him the ulcerous sores with which the whole body of the eastern Church is

covered; and they finish by directing to him a confession of faith,

rejecting the two opposite heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches. They remind

him of the holy Pope Leo, now among the saints, and conjure him to save

them now in their souls as Leo saved bodies from Attila.

But yet it was not given to Pope Symmachus to put an end to this confusion.

He sat during fifteen years and eight months, dying on the 9th July, 514.

The schism raised by the Greek emperor was at an end; and seven days after

his decease the deacon Hormisdas was elected with the full consent of all.

In the meantime the state of the East had gone on from bad to worse.

Anastasius, by writing and by oath, had pledged himself at his coronation

to maintain the Catholic faith and the Council of Chalcedon. Instead he had

persecuted Catholics, banished their bishops, by his falsehood and tyranny

sown discord everywhere. At last one of his own generals, Vitalian, rose

against him. After a long silence he once more betook himself to the Pope.

In January, 518, he wrote to the new Pope, Hormisdas, "that the opinion

spread abroad of his goodness led him to apply to his fatherly affection to

ask of him the offices which our God and Saviour taught the holy Apostles

by mouth, and especially St. Peter, whom He made the strength[94] of His

Church". He asked, therefore, "his apostolate by holding a council to

become a mediator by whom unity might be restored to the churches," and

proposed that a general council should be held at Heraclea, the old

metropolis of Thrace.

Hormisdas, after maturely considering the whole state of things, sent a

legation of five persons to the emperor at Constantinople--the bishops

Ennodius of Pavia, Fortunatus of Catania, the priest Venantius, the deacon

Vitalis, and the notary Hilarius--with the most detailed instructions how

to act. The intent was to test the emperor's sincerity--a foresight which

after events completely justified. This instruction is said to be the

earliest of the kind which has come down to us. Since nothing can so

vividly represent the position of the Holy See as the words used by it on

a great occasion at the very moment when it took place, I give a

translation of it. In reading this it should be remembered that these are

the words of a Pope living in captivity under an Arian and barbaric

sovereign, who had taken possession of Italy about twenty years before, and

had sought for and accepted the royal title from this very emperor.

Further, that with the exception of the Frankish kingdom, in which Clovis

had died four years before, all the West was in possession of Arian rulers,

who were also of barbaric descent. The Pope speaks in the naked power of

his "apostolate". The commission which he gave to his legates was this:[95]

"When, by God's help and the prayers of the Apostles, you come into the

country of the Greeks, if bishops choose to meet you receive them with all

due respect. If they propose a night-lodging for you do not refuse, that

laymen may not suppose you will hold no union with them. But if they invite

you to eat with them, courteously excuse yourselves, saying, Pray that we

may first be joined at the Mystical Table, and then this will be more

agreeable to us. Do not, however receive provision or things of that kind,

except carriage, if need be, but excuse yourselves, saying that you have

everything, and that you hope that they will give you their hearts, in

which abide all gifts, charity and unity, which make up the joy of

religion.

"So, when you reach Constantinople, go wherever the emperor appoints; and

before you see him, let no one approach you, save such as are sent by him.

But when you have seen the emperor, if any orthodox persons of our own

communion, or with a zeal for unity, desire to see you, admit them with all

caution. Perhaps you may learn from them the state of things.

"When you have an audience of the emperor, present your letters with these

words: 'Your Father greets you, daily intreating God, and commending your

kingdom to the intercession of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, that God

who has given you such a desire that you should send a mission in the cause

of the Church and consult his holiness, may bring your wish to full

completion'.

"Should the emperor wish, before he receives your papers, to learn the

scope of your mission, use these words: 'Be pleased to receive our papers'.

If he answer, 'What do they contain?' reply, 'They contain greeting to your

piety, and thanks to God for learning your anxiety for the Church's unity.

Read and you will see this.' And enter absolutely into nothing before the

letters have been received and read. When they have been received and read,

add: 'He has also written to your servant Vitalian, who wrote that he had

received permission from your piety to send a deputation of his own to the

holy Pope, your Father. But as it was just to direct these first to your

majesty, he has done so; that by your command and order, if God please, we

may bear to him the letters which we have brought.'

"If the emperor ask for our letters to Vitalian, answer thus: 'The holy

Pope, your Father, has not so enjoined on us; and without his command we

can do nothing. But that you may know the straightforwardness of the

letters, that they have nothing but entreaties to your piety, to give your

mind to the unity of the Church, assign to us some one in whose presence

these letters may be read to Vitalian.' But if the emperor require to read

them himself, you will answer that you have already intimated not such to

be the command of the holy Pope. If he say, 'They may have also other

charges,' reply, 'Our conscience forbids. That is not our custom. We come

in God's cause. Should we sin against Him? The holy Pope's mission is

straightforward; his request and his prayers known to all: that the

constitutions of the fathers may not be broken; that heretics be removed

from the churches. Beyond that our mission contains nothing.'

"If he say, 'For this purpose I have invited the Pope to a council, that if

there be any doubt, it may be removed,' answer, 'We thank God, and your

piety, that you are so minded, that all may receive what was ordered by the

fathers. For then may there be a true and holy unity among the churches of

Christ, if, by God's help, you choose to preserve what your predecessors

Marcian and Leo maintained.' If he say, 'What mean you by that?' answer,

'That the Council of Chalcedon, and the letters of Pope St. Leo, written

against the heretics Nestorius, and Eutyches, and Dioscorus, may be

entirely kept'. If he say, 'We received and we hold the Council of

Chalcedon, and the letters of Pope Leo,' do you then return thanks, kiss

his breast, and say, 'Now we know that God is gracious to you, when you

hasten to do this, for that is the Catholic faith which the Apostles

preached, without which no one can be orthodox. All bishops must hold to

this and preach it.'

"If he say, 'The bishops are orthodox; they do not depart from the

constitutions of the fathers,' answer, 'If the constitutions of the fathers

are kept, and what was decreed in the Council of Chalcedon is in no respect

broken, how is there such discord in the churches of your land? Why do not

the bishops of the East agree?' If he say, 'The bishops were quiet; there

was no disunion among them. The holy Pope's predecessor stirred up their

minds with his letters, and made this confusion;' answer, 'The letters of

Symmachus, of holy memory, are in our hands. If, besides, what your piety

says, that is, "I follow the Council of Chalcedon, I receive the letters of

Pope Leo," they contain nothing except the exhortation to maintain this,

how is it true that confusion has been produced by them? But if that is

contained in the letters which both your Father hopes and your piety agrees

to, what has he done? What is there in him blameworthy?' add your prayers

and tears, entreat him, 'Let your imperial majesty consider God; put before

your eyes his future judgment. The holy fathers who made these rules

followed the faith of the blessed Apostle, on which the Church of Christ is

built.'

"If the emperor say, 'I receive the Council of Chalcedon, and I embrace

the letters of Pope Leo, enter then into communion with me,' answer, 'In

what order is that to take place? We do not avoid your piety, so declaring,

since we know that you fear God, and rejoice that you are pleased to keep

the constitutions of the fathers. We therefore confidently entreat you that

the Church may return through you to unity. Let all the bishops learn your

will, and that you keep the Council of Chalcedon, and the letters of Pope

Leo, and the apostolical constitutions.' If he say, 'In what order is that

to take place?' recur again, humbly, to entreaties, saying, 'Your Father

has written to all the bishops. Join, herewith, your mandates to the effect

that you maintain what the Apostolic See proclaims, and then let the

orthodox not be separated from the unity of the Apostolic See, and the

opponents will be made known. After that, your Father is even prepared, if

need be, to be present himself, and, preserving the constitutions of the

fathers, to deny nothing which is expedient for the Church's integrity.'

"If the emperor say, 'Well, in the meantime accept the bishop of my city,'

again beseech humbly, 'Imperial majesty, we have come with God's help in

the hope of support on your part to make peace and restore tranquillity in

your city. There is question here about two persons. The matter runs its

proper course. First, let all the bishops be so ordered as to form one

Catholic communion; next, the cause of those persons, or of any others who

may be at a distance from their churches, can be specially considered.' If

the emperor say, 'You are speaking of Macedonius; I see your subtlety. He

is a heretic; he cannot possibly be recalled,' answer, 'Imperial majesty,

we name no one personally; we speak rather in favour of your mind and

opinion, that inquiry may be made, and, if he is heretical, a juridical

sentence passed, that he may not be said to be unjustly deposed, being

reputed orthodox'.

"If the emperor should say, 'The bishop of this city consents to the

Council of Chalcedon and the letters of Pope Leo,' answer, 'If he do so it

will help him the more when his cause is examined; and since you have

allowed your servant Vitalian to treat with the Pope, if he hoped for a

good result on these matters, so let it be'. If the emperor say, 'Should my

city remain without a bishop, is it your desire that where I am there

should be no bishop?' reply, 'We said before there was a question about two

persons in this city. As to the canons, we have already suggested that to

break the canons is to sin against religion. There are many remedies by

which your piety may not remain without communion, and the full judicial

form may be preserved.' If he say, 'What are those forms?' reply, 'Not

newly invented by us. The question as to other bishops may be suspended,

and meanwhile a person who agrees with the confession of your piety and

with the constitutions of the Apostolic See until the issue of the trial

may hold the place of the bishop of Constantinople, if by God's help the

bishops are willing to be in accordance with the Apostolic See. You have in

the records of the Church the terms of the profession which they have to

make.'

"But if petitions be presented to you against other Catholic bishops,

especially against those who shamelessly anathematise the Council of

Chalcedon, and do not receive the letters of Pope St. Leo, take those

petitions, but reserve the cause to the judgment of the Apostolic See, that

you may give them a hope of being heard, and yet reserve the authority due

to us. If, however, the emperor promise to do everything if we will grant

our presence, urge in every way that his mandate first be sent to the

bishops through the provinces, which one of you shall accompany, so that

all may know that he keeps the Council of Chalcedon and the letters of Pope

St. Leo. Then write to us that we prepare to come.

"It is, moreover, the custom to present all bishops to the emperor through

the bishop of Constantinople. If their skilful management so devise in

recognising your legation that you see the emperor in the company of

Timotheus, who appears now to govern the church of Constantinople, if you

learn before your presentation that this is so contrived, say, 'The Father

of your piety has so commanded and enjoined us that we should see your

majesty without any bishop'. So remain until this custom be altered.

"If an absolute refusal be given, or if it is so contrived that before you

have an audience you are suddenly put with Timotheus, say, 'Let your piety

grant us a private audience to set forth the causes for which we have been

sent'. If he say, 'Speak before him,' answer, 'We do no offence, but our

legation also contains his person, and he cannot be present at our

communications'. And on no account enter into anything in his presence; but

when he has gone out produce the text of your mission."

The exact conditions which the legates carried to the emperor were these:

"The Council of Chalcedon and the letters of Pope St. Leo to be kept. The

emperor, in token of his agreement, to send an imperial letter to all the

bishops signifying that he so believes and will so maintain. The bishops

also to express their agreement in Church in presence of the Christian

people that they embrace the holy faith of Chalcedon and the letters of

Pope St. Leo, which he wrote against the heretics, Nestorius, Eutyches, and

Dioscorus, also against their followers, Timotheus Ailouros, Peter, or

those similarly guilty, likewise anathematising Acacius, formerly bishop of

Constantinople, and also Peter of Antioch, with their associates. Writing

thus with their own hand in presence of chosen men of repute, they will

follow the formulary which we have issued by our notary.

"Those who have been banished in the Church's cause are to be recalled for

the hearing of the Apostolic See, that a trial and true examination may be

held. Their cause to be reserved entire.

"If any holding communion with the sacred Apostolic See, preaching and

following the Catholic faith, have been driven away, or kept in banishment,

these, it is just, to be first of all recalled.

"Moreover, the injunction we have laid upon the legates, that if memorials

be presented to them against bishops who have persecuted Catholics, their

judgment be reserved to the Apostolic See, that in their case the

constitutions of the fathers be maintained, by which all may be edified."

Anastasius[96] tried again the old arts. He made a bid of everything to

gain the legates. He seemed ready to accept everything save the demand

regarding Acacius, which he was bound to reject on account of the Byzantine

people. Both to the legates on their return to Rome, and to two officers of

his court whom he sent to Rome, he gave honourable letters for the Pope,

whom he invited to be present at the projected council, and endeavoured to

satisfy fully by an orthodox profession of faith wherein he expressly

recognised the Council of Chalcedon. One only point, he said, whatever

might be his personal feeling, he could not concede, that regarding

Acacius, since otherwise the living would be driven out of the Church for

the dead, and great disturbances and blood-shedding would be inevitable. He

left it to the Pope's consideration. He also wrote to the Roman senate to

use its influence for the restoration of peace to the Church, as well with

the Pope as with king Theodorick, "to whom," said the emperor, "the power

and charge of governing you have been committed". It may be added that

Theodorick favoured, as far as he could, the restoration of peace.

Pope Hormisdas, in his answer, praised the zeal made show of by the

emperor, and wished that his deeds would correspond to his words. He could

not contain his astonishment that the promised embassy was so long in

coming, and that the emperor instead of sending bishops to him, sent two

laymen of his court, in whom he soon recognised Monophysites, who tried to

gain him in their favour. In a letter to St. Avitus and the bishops of his

province, he discloses the judgment which he had formed. "As to the Greeks,

they speak peace with their mouth, but carry it not in their hearts; their

words are just, not their actions; they pretend to wish what their deeds

deny; what they professed, they neglect; and pursue the conduct which they

condemned."[97] Still he resolved to send a new embassy to Constantinople

in 517, at the head of which he put the bishops Ennodius and Peregrinus. He

gave them letters to the emperor, the patriarch Timotheus, the clergy and

people of Constantinople.

Anastasius had endeavoured to delay the whole thing, and to deceive the

orthodox until he found himself strong again, and was no longer in danger

from Vitalian. To bribe the people, he gave the church of Constantinople

seventy pounds' weight of gold for masses for the dead. With regard to the

treatment of Acacius, he had the majority on his side, who were not easily

brought to condemn him. Here, also, he had a pretext to break off impending

agreements. When his wife Ariadne died, he showed himself still less

inclined to peace. She had been devoted to Macedonius, and often interceded

for the orthodox. As soon as he thought himself quite secure, he not only

altered his behaviour and language to the Roman See, but, in the words of

the Greek historian, about 200 bishops who had come to Heraclea from

various parts had to separate without doing anything, "having been deluded

by the lawless emperor and Timotheus, bishop of Constantinople".[98] The

Pope's legates he tried to corrupt; when that did not succeed, he dismissed

them in disgrace, and sent the Pope an insolent letter, in which he said he

desisted from any requests to him, as reason forbade to throw away prayers

on those who would listen to nothing, and while he might submit to

injuries, he would not endure commands. Thereupon broke out a great

persecution against Catholics, which the Archimandrites of the second Syria

report to Hormisdas.

In a supplication signed by more than two hundred, they address him:[99]

"Most blessed Father, we beseech you, arise; have compassion on the mangled

body, for you are the head of all. Come to save us. Imitate our Lord, who

came from heaven on earth to seek out the strayed sheep. Remember Peter,

prince of the Apostles, whose See you adorn, and Paul, the vessel of

election, for they went about enlightening the earth. The flock goes out to

meet you, the true shepherd and teacher, to whom the care of all the sheep

is committed, as the Lord says, 'My sheep hear My voice'. Most holy,

despise us not, who are daily wounded by wild beasts." All that the Roman

See had gained was that the orthodox bishops and many conspicuous easterns

attached themselves to it, and the formulary binding them to obedience to

the decisions of the Roman See found very many subscribers. The empire was

in the greatest confusion when Anastasius died suddenly in the year 518,

hated by the majority of his people, as perjured, heretical, and rapacious.

Just before him died the heretical patriarchs, John II. of Alexandria and

Timotheus of Constantinople.

Then suddenly,[100] as in the third century the Illyrian emperors saved the

dissolving empire, another peasant, who in long and honourable service had

risen to the rank of general, and was respected by all men as a virtuous

man and a good Catholic, was called to take up that eastern crown of

Constantine, which Zeno and Anastasius had soiled with the iniquities and

perfidies of forty years.

At Bederiana, on the borders of Thrace and Illyria, there had lived three

young men, Zimarchus, Ditybiotus, and Justin. Under pressure of misfortune

they deserted the plough, and sought a livelihood elsewhere. They started

on foot, their clothes packed on their backs, no money in their purses,

with a loaf in their knapsacks. They came to Byzantium and enlisted. Twenty

years of age and well grown, they attracted the notice of the emperor Leo

I.: he enrolled them among his life-guards. Justin served as captain in the

Isaurian war. For some unknown fault he was condemned to death by his

general, and the next day was to be executed. The general, says Procopius,

was changed by a vision which he saw that night. Under Anastasius, Justin

rose to the rank of senator, patrician, and commander of the imperial

guard. On the death of Anastasius, the eunuch Amantius, who was lord

chamberlain, and had been up to that time all powerful, sent for Justin,

and gave him great sums of money to get the voice of the soldiers and the

people, for a creature of his own, named Theocritus, in whose name he

intended to rule. Justin distributed the money in his own name, and on the

9th July was proclaimed emperor by army and people. He was sixty-eight

years old, and, if Procopius may be believed, could not even write his own

name, at least in Latin. But he was of long experience, and admirable in

the management of affairs. His wife was named Lupicina, of barbarian birth.

Justin, in the first year of his service, had bought her as a slave, and

married her. When he became emperor he crowned her as empress, and with the

applause of the people gave her the name of Euphemia. He had a nephew born

at Tauresium, a village of Dardania, near Bederiana. He was called Uprauda

in his own land; his father was Istock, his mother Vigleniza. The Romans

changed these Teuton names to Justinian, Sabbatius, and Vigilantia.

Uprauda, the Upright, was the future emperor Justinian.

The accession of Justin was received with universal joy; and the new

emperor at once sent a high officer, Gratus, count of the sacred

consistory, to announce it to Pope Hormisdas, with a letter in which he

said that "John, who had succeeded as bishop of Constantinople, and the

other bishops assembled there from various regions, having written to your

Holiness for the unity of the churches, have earnestly besought us also to

address our imperial letters to your Beatitude. We entreat you, then, to

assist the desires of these most reverend prelates, and by your prayers to

render favourable the divine majesty to us and the commonwealth, the

government of which has been entrusted to us by God."[101]

The count Justinian also wrote to Pope Hormisdas that "the divine mercy,

regarding the sorrows of the human race, had at length brought about this

time of desire. Thus I am free to write to your apostolate, our Lord, the

emperor, desiring to restore the churches to unity. A great part has been

already done. It only requires to obtain the consent of your Beatitude

respecting the name of Acacius. For this reason his majesty has sent to you

my most particular friend Gratus, a man of the highest rank, that you might

condescend to come to Constantinople for the restoration of concord, or at

least hasten to send bishops hither, for the whole world in our parts is

impatient for the restoration of unity."[102]

The result was that Pope Hormisdas held a council at Rome in 518, at which

all that had been done by his predecessors, the Popes Simplicius, Felix,

Gelasius, and Symmachus, was carefully reviewed, and all present decreed

that the eastern Church should be received into communion with the

Apostolic See, if they condemned the schismatic Acacius, entirely effacing

his name, and also expunged from the diptychs Euphemius and Macedonius, as

involved in the same guilt of schism. And a pontifical legation was then

named to carry out the desire of the council, and they bore with them an

instruction, from which they might not depart by a hair's-breadth.[103]

The Pope wrote letters to the emperor, to the empress, to the count

Justinian, especially to the bishop of Constantinople, recommending his

legates, and exhorting the bishop to complete the work which was begun by

condemning Acacius and his followers; also to the archdeacon Theodosius and

the clergy of Constantinople.[104] He points out especially that he wants

nothing new, or unusual, or improper, for Christian antiquity had ever

avoided those who had associated with persons condemned; whoever teaches

what Rome teaches, must also condemn what Rome condemns; whoever honours

what the Pope honours, must likewise detest what he detests. A perfect

peace admits of no division. The worship of one and the same God can only

hold its truth in the unity of confession which embodies the belief.

The papal legates were received honourably on their journey, and found the

bishops in general disposed to sign the formulary issued by the Pope. In

March, 519, they came to Constantinople, where they found the greatest

readiness. The patriarch John took the formulary, and gave it the form of

a letter, which seemed to him more honourable than a formulary such as

those who had fallen would sign. He prefixed to the document which the Pope

required to be subscribed the following preface:

"Brother most dear in Christ, when I received the letters of your Holiness,

by the noble count Gratus, and now by the bishops Germanus and John, the

deacons Felix and Dioscorus, the priest Blandus, I rejoiced at the

spiritual charity of your Holiness, in bringing back the unity of God's

most sacred churches, according to the ancient tradition of the fathers,

and in hastening to reject those who tear to pieces Christ's reasonable

flock. Be then assured that, as I have written to you, I am in all things

one with you in the truth. All those rejected by you as heretics I also

reject for the love of peace. For I accept as one the most holy churches of

God, yours of elder, and this of new Rome; yours the See of the Apostle

Peter, and this of the imperial city, I define to be one. I assent to all

the acts of the four holy councils--that is, of Nicaea, Constantinople,

Ephesus, and Chalcedon--done for the confirmation of the faith and the

state of the Church, and suffer nothing of their good judgments to be

shaken; but I know that those who have endeavoured to disturb a single iota

of their decrees have fallen from the holy, universal, and apostolical

Church; and using plainly your own right words, I declare by this present

writing,"[105] &c.

This is the preface given to his letter by the patriarch John; he then

adds the formulary issued by the Pope from his council in Rome as the terms

of restored communion between the East and West.

"The first condition of salvation is to maintain the rule of a right faith,

and to deviate no whit from the tradition of the fathers; because the

decree of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be passed over, in which He says,

'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church '. These words

are proved by their effect in deed, because the Catholic religion is ever

kept inviolate in the Apostolic See. Desiring, therefore, not to fall from

this faith, and following in all thing the constitutions of the fathers, we

anathematise all heresies, but especially the heretic Nestorius, formerly

bishop of Constantinople, condemned in the Council of Ephesus by

Coelestine, Pope of Rome, and the venerable Cyril, bishop of Alexandria;

and together with him we anathematise Eutyches and Dioscorus, bishop of

Alexandria, condemned in the holy Council of Chalcedon, which we follow and

embrace with veneration, which followed the holy Nicene Council, and set

forth the apostolic faith. To these we join Timotheus the parricide,

surnamed Ailouros, and anathematise him, condemning in like manner Peter of

Alexandria, his disciple and follower in all things; so also we

anathematise Acacius, formerly bishop of Constantinople, who became their

accomplice and follower, and those who persevere in communion and

participation with them; for whoever embraces the communion of condemned

persons shares their judgment. In like manner we condemn and anathematise

Peter of Antioch, with all his followers. Hence we approve and embrace all

the letters of St. Leo, Pope of Rome, which he wrote in the right faith.

Therefore, as aforesaid, following in all things the Apostolic See, we

preach all which it has decreed; and therefore I trust to be with you in

that one communion which the Apostolic See proclaims, in which the solidity

of the Christian religion rests entire and perfect,[106] promising that

these who in future are severed from the communion of the Catholic Church,

that is, who do not in all things agree with the Apostolic See, shall not

have their names recited in the sacred mysteries. But if I attempt in aught

to vary from this my profession, I declare that by my own condemnation I

partake with those whom I have condemned. I have subscribed with my own

hand to this profession, and directed it in writing to thee, Hormisdas, my

holy and most blessed brother, and Pope of Great Rome, by the above-named

venerable bishops, Germanus and John, the deacons Felix and Dioscorus, the

priest Blandus."

The names of Acacius, Fravita, Euphemius, and Timotheus, four bishops of

Constantinople, also of the emperors Zeno and Anastasius, who reigned from

474 to 518 (if we include a few months of Basiliscus), were erased from the

diptychs in the presence of the legates. After that, at the instance of the

emperor, the other bishops, the abbots, and the senate had signed the

formulary, a solemn service was celebrated, to the great joy of the

people, in the Cathedral on Easter eve, the 24th March, to mark the act of

reconciliation, and not the least disturbance took place. The official

narration[107] of the five legates to Pope Hormisdas records the enthusiasm

with which they were received at Constantinople. "From the palace we went

to the church with the vast crowd. No one can believe the exultation of the

people, nor doubt that the Divine Hand was there, bestowing such unity on

the world. We signify to you that in our presence the name of the

anathematised prevaricator, Acacius, was struck out of the diptychs, as

likewise that of the other bishops who followed him in communion. So also

the names of Anastasius and Zeno. By your prayers peace was restored to the

minds of Christians: there is one soul, one joy, in the whole Church; only

the enemy of the human race, crushed by the power of your prayer, is in

mourning."

The emperor Justin wrote to Pope Hormisdas:

"Most religious Father, know that what we have so long earnestly sought to

effect is done. John, the bishop of New Rome, together with his clergy,

agrees with you. The formulary which you ordered, which is in agreement

with the council of the most holy Fathers, has been subscribed by him. In

accordance with that formulary, the mention at the divine mysteries of the

prevaricator Acacius, formerly bishop of this city, has been forbidden for

the future, as well as of the other bishops who either first came against

the apostolic constitutions, or became successors of their error, and

remained unrepentant to death. And since all our realm is to be admonished

to imitate the example of the imperial city, we have directed everywhere

our princely commands, so great is our desire to restore the peace of the

Catholic faith to our commonwealth, to gain for my subjects the divine

protection. For those whom the same realm contains, the same worship

enlightens, what greater blessing can they have than to venerate with one

mind laws of no human origin, but proceeding from the Divine Spirit? Let

your Holiness pray that the divine gift of unity, so long laboured for by

us, may be perpetually preserved."[108]

Thus history tells us that, in the year 484, Acacius, bishop of

Constantinople, being condemned by Pope Felix, answered by striking the

name of Pope Felix out of the diptychs, and that, in the year 519, the name

of Acacius was erased from the diptychs in his own church; that his own

successor not only gave up his memory, but, together with 2500

bishops,[109] signed a formulary which attributes to the Roman See the

words of our Lord to St. Peter, which declares "that the Catholic religion

is ever kept inviolate in the Apostolic See," "in which the solidity of the

Christian religion rests entire and perfect," and which lays down the rule

that whoever does not live and die in the communion of the Roman See has no

claim to commemoration in the Church.

Let us now shortly review the facts which have passed under our notice

since St. Leo returned from his interview with the pirate Genseric in the

year 455.

In that fatal year the Theodosian house became extinct in the West so far

as government was concerned. Valentinian's miserable widow, daughter of the

eastern, wife of the western, emperor, during a short two months the prey

of her husband's murderer, became with her daughters the captive of the

Vandal freebooter, and saw the elder compelled to marry his son Hunnerich,

the future persecutor of the Church. Twenty years succeed in which emperors

are enthroned and pass like shadows, until the Herule general Odoacer,

commanding for the time the Teuton mercenaries, deposes the last imperial

phantom, Romulus Augustulus, and rules Rome and Italy with the title of

Patricius. The western emperor is suppressed.

In 457, the Theodosian house becomes extinct in the East by the death of

the emperor Marcian, before whom the heiress of the empire, St. Pulcheria,

granddaughter of the great Thedosius, had died in 453. He was succeeded by

Leo, a soldier of fortune, but an orthodox emperor, who supported St. Leo.

The emperor Leo reigned until 474, and after a few months, in which his

child grandson, Leo II., nominally reigned, the eastern crown was taken by

Zeno and held till 491, with the exception of twenty months in which

Basiliscus, a successful insurgent, was in possession. As Zeno had reigned

in virtue of being husband of the princess Ariadne, daughter of Leo I., so

Anastasius, in 491, in the words of the Greek chronicle, "succeeded to his

wife and the empire," and he reigned twenty-seven years, to 518.

During this whole period, from the death of the emperor Leo I. in 474 to

that of the emperor Anastasius in 518, the political state of the East and

West was most perilous to the Church. In the East, the three sovereigns,

Zeno, Basiliscus, and Anastasius, were unsound in their belief, treacherous

in their action, scandalous in their life. The Popes addressed with honour,

as the vice-gerents of divine power, men whom, as to their personal

character, they must have loathed. Their government, moreover, was

disastrous to their subjects--a tissue of insurrections, barbaric invasion,

and devastation; at home, civil corruption of every kind.

In the West, Teuton conquerors had taken possession of the Roman empire.

The Herule Odoacer had been put to death in 493 by the Ostrogoth

Theodorick, who, like Odoacer before him, reigned with cognisance and

approbation of the eastern emperor for thirty-three years. Both Odoacer and

Theodorick were Arians; so also Genseric and his son Hunnerich, who ruled

the former Roman provinces in Africa; so the Visigoths in southern France

and Spain; so the Burgundians at Lyons. One conquering race only, that of

the Franks, was not Arian, but pagan, until the conversion of Clovis, in

496, gave to the West one sovereign, Catholic and friendly to the Pope. We

have seen in what terms Pope Anastasius welcomed his baptism. The

population in the old Roman provinces which remained faithful to the

Catholic religion was a portion of the old proprietors, such as had not

been dispossessed by the successive confiscations and redistributions of

land under the victorious northern invaders, and the poor, whether dwelling

in cities or cultivating the soil. And these looked up everywhere to their

several bishops for support and encouragement under every sort of trial.

All men were sorted under two divisions in the vast regions for which

Stilicho had fought and conquered in vain: the one division was Arian and

Teuton, the other Catholic and Roman. And as the several Catholic people

looked to their bishops, so all these bishops looked to the Pope; and St.

Avitus expressed every bishop's strongest conviction when he said, writing

in the name of them all, "In the case of other bishops, if there be any

lapse it may be restored; but if the Pope of Rome is endangered, not one

bishop, but the episcopate itself will seem to be shaken".

When the western emperor was suppressed the Pope became locally subject for

about fourteen years to the Arian Odoacer, and then for a full generation

to the Arian Theodorick. The latter soon found, by a calculation of

interest, that the only way to rule Italy and the adjoining territories

which his conquering arms had attached to Italy was by maintaining civil

justice and equality among all his subjects. He took two of the noblest

Romans, Boethius and Cassiodorus, for his friends and counsellors, and in

the letters of the latter, from about the year 500 to the end of

Theodorick's reign, we possess most valuable information as to the way in

which Theodorick governed. Odoacer would seem likewise, during the years of

his government until he was shut up in Ravenna, to have followed a like

policy. But that the position of the Pope under Odoacer and Theodorick was

one of great difficulty and delicacy no one can doubt. Gelasius speaks of

his having had to resist Odoacer "by God's help, when he enjoined things

not to be done".[110] And in 526 Pope John I. paid with his life, in the

dungeon of Ravenna, the penalty for not having satisfied the Arian

exactions of Theodorick in the eastern embassy imposed upon him.

I mention these things very summarily, having already given them with more

or less detail, but I must needs recur to them because, in weighing the

transactions which the schism of Acacius brought about, it is essential to

bear in mind throughout the embarrassed and subject political situation in

which all the Popes concerned with that schism found themselves.

Within seven years after the western emperor had been suppressed, and the

overlordship of the East been acknowledged by the Roman senate as well as

the Teuton conqueror, what happened?

A bishop of Constantinople, as able and popular as he was unscrupulous, had

established a mental domination over the eastern emperor Zeno. He reigned

in the utmost sacerdotal pomp at Constantinople; he beheld Old Rome sunk

legally to the mere rank of a municipal city, and the See of St. Peter in

it subject to an Arian of barbaric blood. He thought the time was come for

the bishop of the imperial city to emancipate himself from the control of

the Lateran Patriarcheium. Having gained great renown by his defence of the

Council of Chalcedon against the usurper Basiliscus, having denounced at

Rome the misdeeds and the heresy of the Eutychean who was elected by that

party at Alexandria, and having so been high in the trust of Pope

Simplicius, he turned against both Pope and Council. He set up two heretics

as patriarchs--Peter the Stammerer, the very man he had denounced, at

Alexandria, and Peter the Fuller at Antioch. He composed a doctrinal

statement, called the "Form of Union," which, by the emperor's edict, was

imposed on the eastern bishops. It was a scarcely-veiled Eutychean

document. He called to his aid all the jealousy which Nova Roma felt for

her elder sister, all the pride which she felt for the exaltation of her

own bishop. If he succeeded in maintaining his own nominees in the two

original patriarchates of the East, he succeeded at the same time in

subjecting them to his own see. He crowned that series of encroachments

which had advanced step by step since the 150 bishops of the purely eastern

council held at Constantinople just a hundred years before set the

exaltation of the imperial city on a false foundation. In fact, if this his

enterprise succeeded, he obtained the realisation of the 28th canon, which

Anatolius attempted to pass at Chalcedon, and which Pope Leo had

overthrown. But most of all, both in the government of the Church and in

the supreme magisterium, the determination of the Church's true doctrine,

he deposed the successor of St. Peter, and but one single step remained, to

which all his conduct implied the intention to proceed. For the logical

basis of that conduct was the assertion that, as the bishop of Rome had

been supreme when, and because, Rome was the capital of the empire, so when

Constantinople had succeeded Rome as capital, her bishop also succeeded to

the spiritual rights of the Primacy.

We may sum up the attempt of Acacius in a single word: the denial that the

Pope had succeeded to the universal Pastorship of St. Peter.

This, then, was the point at issue, and when the western emperor was

suppressed, and the overlordship of the eastern emperor acknowledged, the

Pope was deprived of all temporal support, and left to meet the attack of

Acacius in the naked power of his apostolate. From the year 483, when the

deeds of Acacius led to his excommunication, followed by the schism, to its

termination in 519, the Popes, being subjects of Arian sovereigns, who were

likewise of barbaric descent, braved the whole civil power of the eastern

emperors, as well as the whole ecclesiastical influence of the bishops of

Constantinople. Not only were Zeno and Anastasius unorthodox, but likewise

they were bent on increasing the influence of that bishop whom they

nominated and controlled. The sovereigns of the East had been able, even by

a simple practice of Byzantine etiquette, to put their own bishop in a

position of determining influence over the whole eastern episcopate. For

we learn from the instruction of Pope Hormisdas to his legates that it was

the custom for every bishop to be presented to the emperor by the bishop of

Constantinople. The Pope most strictly enjoins his legates not to submit to

this. The effect of such a rule upon the eastern bishops who frequented the

court of an absolute sovereign exhibits another cause of that perpetual

growth which accrues to the bishop of the imperial city.

Every human power, every conjunction of circumstances, seemed to be against

the Popes in this struggle. While the East was thus in hostile hands, under

emperors who were either secretly or avowedly heretical, the West was under

Arian domination. Italy was ruled from 493 to 526 by a man of great

ability. Few rulers have surpassed Theodorick either in success as a

warrior or in political skill. He had, further, enlaced the contemporary

rulers in the various countries of the West in ties of relationship with

himself. He had married Andefleda, sister of Clovis; he gave Theudigotha,

one of his own daughters by a concubine, to Alaric of Toulouse, king of the

Visigoths, and another, Ostrogotha, to Sigismund, king of the Burgundians,

at Lyons. Even before he had conquered Odoacer, in 493, he was in strict

alliance with the king of the Vandals in Africa, to whom he gave his sister

Amalafrieda to wife, and her daughter Amalaberga to the king of the

Thuringians. He solicited the royal title in 496 by an embassy to

Anastasius, and the result of that embassy was that the chief man in it,

Faustus, patrician and senator, when he returned to Rome, contrived to

raise a schism in the clergy itself against Pope Symmachus. This schism was

the greatest difficulty which the Pope in all this period encountered.

Theodorick in political talent and warlike genius reminds historians of

Charlemagne: but instead of having that monarch's faith, he was an Arian.

His equal treatment of Arian and Catholic was a carefully thought-out

policy; nor did he scruple at the very end of his career to sacrifice even

the very life of the Pope to his political schemes. He favoured the senate

of Rome in its corporate capacity; he favoured individual senators, but

always as instruments of his own absolute rule, the key to which was to

unite the use of the Roman mind in administration with the Gothic arm in

action. When the end of the schism came, he had married his only child

Amalasunta, the heiress of his kingdom, to Eutharic, who in the first year

of the emperor Justin was consul of Rome with that prince, and nominated by

him.

On what, then, did the Pope rely? On one thing only--that in the inmost

conscience of the Church, in East and West, he was recognised as St.

Peter's successor; that upon everyone who sat in the Apostolic See had

descended the mighty inheritance, the charge which no man could execute

except he were empowered by divine command and sustained by divine support.

For as it required God to utter the words, "Upon this rock I will build My

Church"; "If thou lovest Me, feed My sheep"; "Confirm thy brethren "; so

it no less required God to enable any man to fulfil that charge. But how

when it comes to a succession of men? How many families can show a

continuous succession of three temporal rulers equally great? Can any

family show four such? Can anyone calculate the power which maintains such

a succession through centuries?

Here, after four full centuries, in that one belief the seven next

successors of St. Leo--Hilarus, Simplicius, Felix, Gelasius, Anastasius,

Symmachus, and Hormisdas--stood as one man. Their counsels did not vary.

Their resolve was one. Their course was straight. In Leo's time the earth

reeled beneath the tread of Attila, the city groaned beneath Genseric's

hoof. And now three heretics--despots, and ignoble despots, if ever such

there were--filled the sole imperial throne. Arians, closely connected by

family ties and identical interests, divided the West among them. The seven

Popes sat on at the Lateran in the palace which Constantine had given them,

and said Mass in the church which he had built for them. Three of his

degenerate successors tried every art against them and failed. During

twenty years of this time, from 476 to 496, no ruler small or great

acknowledged the Catholic faith. The East was Eutychean, the West Arian. At

length St. Remigius baptised the Frankish chief as first-born of the Teuton

race in the Catholic faith of the Holy Trinity, and the Pope at Rome gave

utterance as a father to his joy. The end was that the schism was

terminated on the part of the bishop, the heir of the seat and the

ambition of Acacius, by the prince, by his nobles, among them the

legislator who was to be Justinian, and by 2500 bishops throughout the

East, acknowledging in distinct terms that one unique authority on which

the Popes had rested throughout the contest. They declared solemnly, in

celebrating the holiest mystery of the Christian faith, that the word of

the Lord cannot be passed over, saying, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock

I will build My Church". They added that the course of five hundred years

had exemplified the fact "that the solidity of the Christian religion rests

entire and perfect in the Apostolic See". The rebellion of Acacius in 483

drew forth this confession from his successor, John II., in 519.

The seven successors of St. Leo stood as one man. No variation in their

language or their conduct can be found. Not so the seven successors of

Anatolius at Constantinople. That bishop, who had seen himself foiled by

the vigour and sagacity of St. Leo at the Council of Chalcedon, lived

afterwards on good terms with him, and died in 458, in his lifetime. He was

succeeded by Gennadius, who, during the thirteen years of his episcopate,

was faithful both to the creed which St. Leo had preserved and to the

dignity of the Apostolic See. He was followed by Acacius, who occupied the

see from 471 to 489. There was some quality in Acacius which gained the

favour of princes. He had charmed at once the old emperor Leo I.; but Zeno,

whose influence first made him bishop, afterwards followed all his

teaching. He had also gained a renown for orthodoxy by refusing the

attempt of Basiliscus to make the imperial will a rule of Church doctrine.

It was when his stronger mind had mastered Zeno that he began the desperate

attempt against the doctrine and discipline of the Apostolic See which has

been our chief subject. But when he died in 489, his successor Fravita at

once renounced the position which he had taken up by asking the recognition

of Pope Felix and restoring his name in the diptychs. It is true that in

his conduct he was double-dealing, and, while he sought for the Pope's

recognition, parleyed with the heretical patriarch of Alexandria. But he

died in three months, and was succeeded by Euphemius, who likewise

repudiated the act of Acacius, and earnestly sought reconciliation with the

Pope, while he was unwilling to fulfil the condition of it--that he should

erase the name of Acacius from the diptychs. The six years' episcopate of

Euphemius was one long contest with the treachery and persecution of the

emperor Anastasius, who at last, by help of the resident council, was able

to depose him. He placed Macedonius in his stead, who again sought to be

reconciled with the Pope, but only would not pay the price of renouncing

the person, as he fully renounced the conduct, of Acacius. During fifteen

years, from 496 to 511, as Euphemius had resisted the covert heresy of

Anastasius, so did Macedonius, and, like him, he fell at last before the

enmity of the emperor. Upon the deposition of Macedonius, the emperor

obtained the election of Timotheus, who during seven years was his docile

instrument. When he died in 518, the bishop John was elected, whose great

desire was the restoration of unity, with the maintenance of the faith of

Chalcedon. By side of the seven Popes succeeding St. Leo put the seven

bishops of the emperor's city. We find two--the first and the

last--Gennadius and John, blameless. The second, Acacius, author of all the

evil in a schism of thirty-five years. The third, the fourth, and the fifth

shrink from the deed of Acacius; and two of them are deposed by the

emperor, while his people respect and cherish their memory. The sixth is a

mere tool of the emperor.

Four eastern emperors occupy the sixty years from Marcian to Justin. Three

of them are of the very worst which even Byzantium can show. Their reply to

the appeal of the Pope to "the Christian prince and Roman emperor" was to

betray the faith and sacrifice Rome to Arian occupation.

But when we turn from the bishops and emperors of the eastern capital to

the seats of the ancient patriarchs, to the Alexandria of Athanasius and

Cyril, to the Antioch of Ignatius, Chrysostom, and Eustathius, no words can

express the division, the scandals, the excesses, which the Eutychean

spirit, striving to overthrow the Council of Chalcedon, showed during those

sixty years. With this spirit Acacius played to stir up the eastern

jealousy against the Apostolic See of the West, and he found a most willing

coadjutor in the eastern emperor, the more so because that See was no

longer locally situated in his domain. The chance of Acacius lay

throughout in the pride of that monarch who was become the sole inheritor

of the Roman name, as Pope Felix reminded him, and who would fain see Nova

Roma the centre of ecclesiastical rule, as it was become the head of the

diminished empire. Anastasius, after Zeno, was still more swayed by these

motives than his predecessor.

But here we touch the completeness of the success which followed the trust

placed in their apostolate by the seven immediate successors of St. Leo. In

proportion as Rome became in the temporal order a mere municipal city, the

sacerdotal authority of its bishop came out into clearer light. Three times

in the fifth century Rome was mercilessly sacked--in 410, in 455, in 472.

Its senators were carried into slavery, its population diminished. The

finishing stroke of its ignominy may be said to be the deposition, by a

barbarian _condottiere_, of the poor boy whose name, repeating in

connection the founder of the city with the founder of the empire, seemed

to mock the mortal throes of the great mother. But this lessening of the

secular city, so far from lessening the authority of the spiritual power,

reveals to all men, believers or unbelievers, that the pontificate, whose

seat is locally in the city, has a life not derived from the city. Rome's

temporal fall exhibits in full the intangible spiritual character of the

pontificate. If St. Peter had to any seemed to rule because he was seated

on the pedestal of the Caesarean empire, when that empire fell the Apostle

alone remained to whom Christ gave the charge, whom He invested with the

"great mantle".[111] The bishop of the city in which an Arian Ostrogoth

ruled supreme as to temporal things was acknowledged by the head of the

empire, from whom the Ostrogoth derived his title, as the person in whom

our Lord's word--the creative word which founds an empire as it makes a

world--was accomplished, had been during five hundred years accomplished,

would be for ever accomplished.[112]

The malice of Acacius largely led to this result. His attack was the

prelude to the sifting of the Pope's prerogative during thirty-five years:

its sifting by a rival at Constantinople, by the eastern bishops, by the

eastern emperor, who had now also become the sole Roman emperor; and the

sifting was followed by a full acknowledgment. Nothing but this hostile

conduct would have afforded so indubitable a proof of the thing impugned.

While the ancient patriarchates which had formed the substructure of the

triple dais on which the Apostolic See rested were falling into

irretrievable confusion, while the new State-made patriarch at

Constantinople was trying to nominate and, if he could, to consecrate his

elders and superiors at Alexandria and Antioch, who descended from Peter,

the essential prerogative of the Apostolic See itself came forth into full

light. The bishops at Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and

every other city in the world would be great or small in influence

according to the greatness or smallness of their city. If the city fell

altogether, the see would fall. Its life was tied to the city. But it was

not so with that pontificate on which the Church was built. There and there

only the living power was given by Christ to a man: not local, nor limited,

nor transitory. This was the great truth which the Acacian schism helped to

establish in the minds of men, and which was proclaimed in that Nova Roma

where Acacius had refused the judgment of Pope Felix, and had tried to put

himself on an equality. As a result, in the terms of union which have been

above recited, the action of Acacius has had the honour to condemn the

rebellion of Photius three hundred years before it arose, and every other

rebellion which has imitated that of Photius.

Nor must it be forgotten that it was the constancy of the Popes in these

sixty years which alone prevented the prevailing of Eutychean doctrine in

the East. Blent with that doctrine was the attempt of three emperors to

substitute themselves as judges of doctrine for the Apostolic See and the

bishops in union with it. At the moment when John Talaia[113] was expelled

from Alexandria, the Monophysite heresy, espoused by Acacius and imposed by

Zeno, would have triumphed, save for the Popes Simplicius and Felix. And it

would have triumphed while the instrument of its triumph, the Henotikon,

would have inflicted a deadly blow upon the government of the Church by

taking away the independence of her teaching office. This struggle

continued during the reign of Zeno; and Anastasius, as soon as he became

emperor, used all the absolute power which he possessed to enforce the

reception of the same document. Even Euphemius and Macedonius were obliged

to sign it, and the sacrifice which they made in suffering deposition does

not deliver their character of bishops from the stain of this weakness. We

see in this period the first stadium traversed by the Greek Church in that

descending course which, in another century, brought it to the ruin wrought

by Mahomet.

On the other hand, the seven Popes kept the position of St. Leo--rather,

they more than kept it, because, under outward circumstances so greatly

altered for the worse, they both maintained his doctrine and justified his

conduct. They insisted through the darkest times, under pressure of the

greatest calamities, deprived of all temporal aid, that the person of

Acacius should be solemnly removed from recognition as a bishop by the

Church. They insisted, and it was done. The act of Acacius, if allowed to

pass, would have carried into actual life the assertion of the canon which

St. Leo had rejected: that the privileges of the Roman See were derived

from the grant of the Fathers to Rome because it was the capital. The

expunging of his name from the diptychs, with the solemn asseveration that

the rank of the Holy See was derived from the gift of Christ, and that the

Church's solidity as a fabric consisted in it, and equally the maintenance

of the Catholic religion, established the contradictory of that 28th canon,

and enforced for ever the subordination of the see which Acacius sought to

exalt. At the same time it pointed out the distinction between the See of

Peter and all other sees: the distinction that in the case of every other

bishop the spiritual life of the bishop, as a ruler, is local and attached

to his see. But the See of Peter is the generator of the episcopate,

because of Peter ever living in his successor.

It may also be remarked that it is this overflowing life of Peter which

invests titular bishops with the names of dead sees. Thus they sit as

members of a General Council, verifying to the letter St. Cyprian's adage,

that the episcopate is one, of which a part is held by each without

division of the whole.

The submission of Constantinople in its bishop, its clergy, its emperor,

its nobles, attested by the subscription of 2500 bishops throughout the

East, is an event to which there can hardly be found a parallel. The

submission was made to Pope Hormisdas when he was himself, as his

predecessors for forty-three years had been, subject to an Arian

ruler.[114] If there be in all history an act which can be called in a

special sense an act of the undivided Church, it is this. It was made more

than three hundred years before the schism of Photius. If the confession

contained in this submission does not exhibit the mind of the Church, what

form of words, what consent of will, can ever be shown to convey it? If

those who subscribed this confession subscribed a falsehood, why pretend

any longer to attribute authority to the Church? But it must be added, if

their confession was the truth, why not obey it?

It is to be noted that this period of sixty years is full of events which

caused the greatest suffering to the Popes, were unceasingly deplored by

them, and resisted to the utmost of their power. The temporal condition of

themselves, of the bishops, of their people in Italy, Africa, France,

Spain, Illyricum, Britain, was most sad. The most vehement of persecutions

desolated Africa. Again, there was the suppression of the western emperor,

with the consequent subjection of the Apostolic See to the temporal

government of the most hateful of heresies: the Oriental despotism of Zeno

and Anastasius, continued for forty-four years, mixed with another heresy,

and tending to destroy both faith and independence in the bishops subject

to it. The Popes, as Romans, felt with the keenest sympathy the political

degradation of Rome. Can any appeal be more touching than that which they

made, and made in vain, to the "Christian king and Roman prince"? Out of

all these things, whose natural consequences tended to extinguish their

principate, came forth the most magnificent attestation to it which is to

be found in the first five hundred years of the Christian religion.

NOTES:

[70] _Epist._ i.; Labbe, v. 406.

[71] Mansi, viii. 193.

[72] Epistola Aviti episcopi Viennensis ad Clodoveum regem

Francorum.--Mansi, viii. 175.

[73] See for this narrative the German Roehrbacher, viii. 486; Civilta,

1855, art. 9, pp. 152-3; Hefele, ii. 607; Photius, i. 136.

[74] Photius, i. 137. Der Einfluss des roemischen Stuhles war doch mehr

durch die Erneuerung des laurentianischen Schisma als durch die Macht der

arianischen Ostgothen auf laengere Zeit gelaehmt.

[75] _Ep._ vi.; Mansi, viii. 213-217.

[76] Qualiscunque praesulis apostolici debes vocem patienter audire.

[77] _I.e._, Manicheans placed the seat of evil in matter, and Eutycheans

denied the materiality of the Lord's body. The Pope alludes to the

Emperor's Eutychean doctrine.

[78] Catholici principes quidem semper apostolicos praesules institutos

suis literis praevenerunt, et illam confessionem fidemque praecipuam,

tanquam boni filii, quaesierunt debitae pietatis affectu, cui noscis ipsius

Domini Salvatoris ore curam totius Ecclesiae delegatam.

[79] Ubi te, rerum humanarum princeps, qualiscunque Sedis Apostolicae

vicarius contestari mea voce non desino.

[80] Ad eam sua protinus scripta miserunt ut _se docerent ejus esse

consortes_.--Mansi, viii. 217.

[81] See Hefele, ii. 607 and 209.

[82] "Intuitu misericordiae," says Anastasius.

[83] Hefele, ii. 216.

[84] Mansi, viii. 247-252; Hefele, ii. 623-5.

[85] _Acts of the Synodus Palmaris._--Mansi, viii. 247-251.

[86] Hefele, ii. 624.

[87] Mansi, viii. 293-5. _Ep._ xxxi. Migne, vol. lix, 248.

[88] Hefele, ii. 625-30; Roehrbacher, viii. 463.

[89] Mansi, viii. 284, _The libellus apologeticus_, pp. 274-290.

[90] Replicabo, uni dictum, Tu es Petrus, &c., et rursus sanctorum voce

pontificum dignitatem ejus sedis factam toto orbe venerabilem, dum illi

quicquid fidelium est ubique submittitur, dum totius corporis caput esse

designatur.--Mansi, viii. 284.

[91] The narrative from Photius, i. 134.

[92] Ephrem, v. 9759.

[93] Ecclesia orientalis ad Symmachum episcopum Romanum.--Mansi, viii.

221-6.

[94] In qua fortitudinem Ecclesiae suae constituit. Epistola Anastasii ad

Hormesdam pontificem.--Mansi, viii. 384.

[95] Mansi, viii. 389-393.

[96] Photius, i. 143-5, translated.

[97] _Ep._ x. _ad Avitum Viennensem._ Mansi, viii. 410.

[98] Theophanes, p. 248.

[99] Mansi, viii. 425.

[100] German Roehrbacher, viii. 532, book 43, 81, mostly followed.

[101] Mansi, viii. 435.

[102] Mansi, viii. 438.

[103] Mansi, viii. 441. Indiculus quem acceperunt legati Apostolicae Sedis.

It much resembles the former one, given to the legates sent to Anastasius.

[104] Photius, i. 148.

[105] Mansi, viii. 451.

[106] In qua est integra Christianae religionis et perfecta soliditas.

[107] Suggestio Germani et Joannis episcoporum, Felicis et Dioscori

diaconorum, et Blandi presbyteri.--Mansi, viii. 453.

[108] Sacra imperatoris Justini ad Hormisdam.--Mansi, viii. 456.

[109] Photius, i. 149, who refers to the Deacon Rusticus, _Disputatio

contra Acephalos_.

[110] Mansi, viii. 60.

[111] Il granto manto, Dante.

[112] Quia in sede Apostolia inviolabilis _semper_ Catholica custoditur

religio.

[113] Hergenroether, _K.G._, i. 333.

[114] See Photius, i. 149.